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dailypuzzle

Ginger GM

Chess.com

June 17, 2014 22:55

World Rapid: Half-Point Lead For Carlsen After Day 2 | UPDATE: Video

Magnus Carlsen is the sole leader at the FIDE World Rapid Championship in Dubai with five rounds to go. In round 10 the Norwegian defeated co-leader Fabiano Caruana of Italy in a direct confrontation and is now half a point ahead of Levon Aronian of Armenia, who defeated Hikaru Nakamura in Tuesday's final round. On Wednesday the decisive last five rounds will be played.

On what was another very hot day for most participants, but a normal one for Dubai standards, rounds 6-10 of the World Rapid Championship were played in the rook-shaped Dubai Chess & Culture Club. Luckily many of the technical problems of the first day were solved, and so the tournament was easier to follow for the chess fans at home.

Update: here's our video report, which includes interviews with the world's #1 and #2 of classical chess (and currently in the standings!) Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian:

The tournament is enjoying the luxury of having many of the world's best players among the participants, and even better: none of them is out of form. Not all of them had a good first day, but players like Carlsen, Aronian, Grischuk, Caruana, Anand, Nakamura, Karjakin and Svidler were all moving up to the top of the standings, and together with e.g. Ian Nepomniachtchi, Evgeny Tomashevsky and Yu Yangyi they will fight for the top prizes tomorrow.

Yesterday he told Chess.com that he was playing the tournament “just for fun”, and perhaps it was that mindset that helped Caruana to beat Nepomniachtchi on board one in Tuesday's starting round. He found a healthy set-up against the King's Indian Attack and slowly outplayed his opponent.

The 7th round lasted about 1.5 hours because of one game: Matlakov-Vakhidov, who reached a RN-R ending. Matlakov tried it for many moves (most probably more than fifty) before giving up his winning attempts, and it was all watched by the other participants on TV screens in the cafeteria.

Players watching the Matlakov-Vakhidov game...

...but finally there was a handshake!

Caruana maintained his lead in round 8 with a draw againt Movsesian, who was making a very solid impression. Nepomniachtchi and Karjakin also split the point, and the group of players behind Caruana became bigger. One of them was Nakamura, who beat Morozevich in an excellent game as Black. The American had no problems with that 2.b3 move!

In round 9 Caruana-Grischuk and Nakamura-Nepomniachtchi ended in draws. Carlsen caught Caruana in first place thanks to a win against Movsesian, who was very disappointed - he probably thought the ending should have been holdable, and he was probably right.

As in any Swiss event, the tournament leaders get paired against each other and so it was Carlsen vs Caruana in round 10! Via 1.d4 the players reached a Philidor and White was a bit better after the opening. A tactical sequence led to a passed a-pawn for Carlsen and he used more nice tactics to get it to the eighth rank:

And so, with five rounds to go, Carlsen is on 8.0/10 and Aronian on 7.5/10. They will play each other on top board on Wednesday, and again the round starts at 15:00 local time (Dubai = GMT+4, so 13:00 Amsterdam, 12:00 London, 07:00 New York, 04:00 Los Angeles).

The World Rapid starts today at 3pm local time which is 1pm CET, 7am New York and 4am Los Angeles. The championship will be broadcast live on the tournament’s official website with online games and commentary.

Carlsen's games are not interesting. No groundbreaking novelties, no fire on the board, nothing. True chess fans will patiently await the return of the real king of chess, Vladimir Kramnik, who will delight us with his beautiful, scientific approach to the opening, as well as his impeccable endgame technique.

"none of them (the world's best [rapid] players is out of form" - this isn't completely true: Fifth seed and defending champion Mamedyarov has only 6/10 and has already lost three games. 10th seed (rapid specialist?) Korobov has only 4.5/10. Wang Hao (5.5/10) and Eljanov (5/10) probably also aren't happy with their events.

Don't take "Stu Pidme" seriously. Yes, the field last year was weaker, but even then Mamedyarov wouldn't have finished on top with three losses (against [players comparable to] Jobava, Efimenko and Najer). And Carlsen's result is an entirely separate story.

Whilst I agree that it's probably a bit of an unnecessary sweeping statement at the top of the article, I don't think you can insert the word 'Rapid' into that quote - I don't think that is the implication. I think that the statement is more in reference to people who are popularly considered to be 'the best', i.e. at the very top of the classical ratings, invited to top tournaments etc.
Just a thought.

So the current leaders are the top-rated classical chess players? I guess rapid is more transitive than blitz but would be willing to be proved wrong. Too bad for Nakamura that his phenomenal bullet skills are of little value here. I suspect that Nakamura's top rapid rating is based upon an insufficient number of games and also the world champ had not made rapid a priority before.

Bullet skills depend as much on your mouse and computer set up as your chess. it is interesting those players who are of significantly different strength at blitz , rapid and classical . I wonder what the reasons for that are?

Rapid games are best way to promote chess ... it is quick , produce more decisive results and offers more action in a day than classical chess. Swiss event makes it even more interesting as it allows mix things ....Great to see Carlsen is doing great !

I don't get why people are so serious about this tournament and the player's results. For the players this is fun and a great opportunity to try out some stuff - given a few exceptions.
Might we consider approaching this in the same way?

Carlsen couldn't really complain about 1.5/3 from his games against Aronian, Anand and Grischuk - 0.5/3 might have been a logical result given the course of the games, he just lost "the wrong one". Carlsen had the best result and played the slightly more successful (not necessarily "better") rapid chess - obviously Anand and Aronian also had their moments of luck. IMO overall Caruana looked like the most stable player, but he (also) came half a point short of first place.

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